Miscellaneous News

mossen said:

India will never be a friend of China. Zhou Enlai tried to end the border conflict already back in the 1950s by proposing mutual acceptance of border areas. China would get Aksai Chin and India would get what they call Arunachal Pradesh. India rejected it then and has rejected it since.

Don't fool yourself. India is only moving towards China because circumstances forced them to. There is great distrust among Indians, particularly the Hindutva types. Ironically, it's precisely these self-styled nationalists who were the biggest boosters of a US-India partnership. The left-secular Congress had traditionally favoured a more balanced foreign policy, closer to Russia and the global south.

For the Philippines, public sentiment is overwhelmingly anti-China. For Vietnam, it's more complex. The leadership is pretty pro-China but the people beneath the elites are more pro-US. This is weird, given the brutal Vietnam war. China's brief border skirmish was a nothingburder in comparison.

I think the main reason for all of this is the diaspora. Indian, Vietnamese and Filipinos diasporas are all very numerous in the West and this creates a natural cultural link to elites back home. China is a much more closed society, so there hasn't been the opportunity to create foreign diasporas. In addition, China was simply too poor to be attractive for immigrants until recently. For these reasons, people-to-people ties are scarce compared to what the West can offer these countries. China also has its own enclosed cultural space. India consumes lots of Western culture, whereas China largely does not except a few films on the margins.

Making a rational argument on economics is a very Chinese way of thinking, because Chinese people are pragmatic and rational. But people in global south countries often have emotional and social factors swaying their decisions. It's the same reason why elites in countries like Iran or Armenia keep running into the arms of the West even if it doesn't make much sense from a cold geopolitical standpoint. Because it's an emotional decision.

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tamsen_ikard said:

Because they are less of a western worshipper than East Asians. Arabs also did not adopt the western suit. India/Pakistan/South Asia despite being colonized has more of its traditional culture than China or other east asian cultures who whole heartedly abandoned their older culture and customs for western customs.

Compare Indian wedding and Chinese wedding wearing western style dresses and suits. East Asians think Western style wedding as cool and romantic, and their own wedding customs as boring and outdated. South Asians and Middle-easterners don't think like that.

South Asians and Middle-easterners still wear their own style of dresses in everyday life. I see a fundamental difference in thinking between East Asia on this where European customs, dress and culture is seen as cool. South Asians or Middle-easterners consider European/Western culture as corrupting their own culture.

East Asians probably developed faster because of their wholesale adoption of the west, but they also have little of their own culture in day-to-day life.

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horse said:

You're being way too superficial in regards to cultural norms and a Chinese wedding.

Have you ever been to a Chinese wedding banquet?

The majority of this forum knows the answer to that, and it is obvious you have never been to one.

What does the bride in a Chinese wedding banquet do? She changes her wardrobe all through the evening. Okay, I do not know how many dresses she goes through, at least 3 or 4 maybe.

I have been to a couple of Western wedding banquets, and the bride she stayed in the same white dress all night. What a big difference.

So what does it mean when a Chinese bride wear a Western white wedding dress, only to change it out rather soon.

I do not know. Seems to me that we Chinese are the biggest cultural appropriators ever invented. LOL!

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TheFoozyOne said:

There is a simpler reason why Chinese leaders never wear traditional dress, it’s because there is no traditional dress that can represent all 56 Chinese ethnicities.

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